Before anyone asks, I am average appearance. I don't drive (bicycle only). Things I had going in my favor: I'm white, had a flexible job (could meet whenever) and vegan diet (probably the biggest help as vegan women way outnumber vegan men even here in Portland).

Here are my tips for men seeking women:

1. Say as little as possible in your profile.

2. Spend as close to no time as possible on the messages you send. Should be 3-5 sentences max and end in a relevant question that the recipient can answer.

3. If you get a response, don't waste time with back and forth. Immediately ask to meet for coffee.

4. Ask questions and listen. When someone tells a story, don't immediately tell one that's similar-- ask a question.

5. Open your age range to include women who are older than you are (try as much as a decade, not just 1-2 years).

It doesn't work so well if your interests, tastes, or personality are off the beaten track, however.

I have a lot of unusual interests and prefer to find women who share them. So my success rate at just randomly rolling the dice and having women just randomly roll the dice in return (such as with short profiles or speed dating) has been pretty low.

What has worked reasonably well for me has been having really detailed profiles. That way women really know what they're getting when they contact me, and I they're likely to be women who self-select to be relatively compatible with me by the time they reach out -- though there's always the chance that we just won't have much chemistry when we meet in person, and that tends to happen more often than not (though not as often as when I meet random women at bars, clubs, work, or wherever).

I've also never posted pictures of myself (though I have sent them upon request). That, along with my interests, helps to select women for whom looks aren't critically important, which is important for me (despite being above average in appearance myself.. I just don't want to be sought after primarily for my looks).

Another thing that's helped enormously is to find some way that immediately sets you apart from the crowd. My profiles/personals effectively scream "freak!" and that attracts freaks in return -- which is exactly what I want. That can be a huge turn off for the normals, but an attraction for people who share my tastes.

Not to get too philosophical, but I think it's important to somehow signal to others that you are like them. That's why dress codes for subcultures are still so important. They're systems of signaling that you share common tastes, world outlooks, interests. The same has to be done on dating sites, whether you do that through a pic of your biker tats or punk haircut, or (as in my case) by just detailing your interests.

Personality is, of course, also important, and that can come through your writing (or pics). I still have to work on that.. maybe take a creative writing course. My profiles are definitely way too dry.

I wonder how a dating service focused on detailed profiles, later meeting, and customizable search range would do...

So no, a picture of your pet rabbit will NOT work as a primary profile picture.

Recently I tried creating a profile and was told a picture was required to proceed. Is this a newer requirement?

How did you manage to infer that my interests were so pedestrian?

If that strategy worked out for you despite you being really different from most people, I think you must have just gotten lucky to meet some people who were also really different from most and also like yourself.

In my own experience, there just aren't enough people who are compatible with me to have a short profile and just roll the dice. Over and over the dice rolls fail. But, who knows, maybe it's just bad luck.

I know a sample of 1 is nothing etc. but I read an article [1] a while back about a woman who tracked everything she could about every date she went on for two years, and one of the most interesting things I felt was that if she met someone through a dating site, it meant that she knew a lot more about them up-front, and thus didn't like them as much.

[1](http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/what-you-can-lea...)

  "People can look great on paper but it doesn't mean that they are
  the right person for you.

  "That was basically what came from this whole project - chemistry
  can't be quantified. I have no idea why this guy I am falling for,
  even though he looks terrible on paper and then another guy is
  awesome on paper and I don't care about him at all."

1. I sort of did the same.

2. I like to banter a bit with Tinder matches. I like to see if you can write. Writing shows personality, hopefully humor, and level of education. I tend towards wordiness, but I too had to pare back my texts otherwise I seemed wordy and overeager.

3. If I got a sense you could spell, had decent grammar, a brief exchange would be OK but I'd be hesitant to meet with somebody straight out the gate without some banter. Banter is the fun part of meeting new people.

4. Agree!

5. Thank you from all the older women on Tinder :-)

Turns out blasting a simple message to as many girls as possible is the best way of online dating.

That sounds like a part time job by itself.

I remember an OKCupid stats review where they were talking about the age ranges opened for the genders. Women tended to do 5 years over to 5 years under, and men tended to do 5 years over to 10-15 years under. The analyst admonished the men for being ageist and not opening up higher to match... despite the women having the same range for higher ages.

Age is a weird one when it comes to love.

As many, many women will tell you, the unrelenting torrent of creepy messages and dick picks is by no means an unmitigated positive. Yes, you can just open your inbox and find it full, but mostly it's full of utter crap, which actively drowns out the actual good messages. The article glosses over this; just ignore the "addled idiots" and exchange an email with the good guys. For many women it's more a case of "find inbox 100% full of unsolicited pictures of genitals; close it and go watch Netflix alone".

Similarly, as many guys can attest (including me, and other guys in the comments here), not being massaged out of the blue is survivable (it's no different than real life, and I'm somehow survived the experience of never being accosted on the street and asked out on a date...), and response rates are not that low if you're smart about it. People talk about 50 messages to get a reply; my experience is more like 10 to get a date (and no, I'm not conventionally attractive).

In short, I'd say online dating sucks for everyone, in different ways, but it's not that bad for anyone. "Soul crushing"? Hardly. And if all of your messages are being ignored, maybe it says something about your messages.

(The real trick, I think, is empathy. Think about the person you're messaging. They have an inbox full of terrible messages. What can you write that will stand out? How can you make the reply interesting? What do they want to see? They have too many messages; they're looking for a reason to filter your out; what do you need to avoid saying? Your goal is to get them to read the message, then click on your profile, then reply to your message. It's not that hard a problem!)

And the rejections don't hurt that much. As a man rejection from women is a part of life. To be rejected by a lack of response is about the best rejection I can think of. I mean, I still have vivid memories of being rejected by girls in high school and can't remember a single profile from a woman who didn't respond to me.

I can confirm this is true.

I spoke with my fiance about this she and she showed me how many messages are got. While a guy may get a few replies. She had so many new messages mine had dropped off the page. Message management was a paid feature, but sending was free as was searching and filtering.

If anything: Perhaps the problems with online dating aren't simply skewed ratios, but poor design with regards to how users used the Software vs expectations.

Why should a woman search through profiles when she can review 20+ already interested candidates in a day? Why should she reply to every message (I assume the average guy doesn't message every girl)?

I don't think you can equate a man sending a message with genuine interest in many cases. At the very least women on dating sites have to filter out the guys who cut and paste the same message to every woman. Even if that's only 1% of guys, that's still a lot of messages to read and reject.

same thing happens, women say try online dating, its so easy! my response rate (let alone something that leads to a rl meeting) is about 1/50. not worth it.

i wonder if online dating will become so bad for men, that it will be bad for women too, as the quality men realize its not a favorable arena.

Also: the biggest trick for being successful online is to keep your profile as brief as possible. Everything you say about yourself someone will find off-putting. You need just enough to show you're likely a real profile and give the people you contact something to ask you about if they decide to respond.

That said, unless you've got some comic gold up your sleeve, you're probably right.

Sounds like he found the butter zone with that.

The real key is to distinguish yourself from the ocean of generic ads and profiles.

So the assumption here is that if something that works for a lot of other people (even in this thread it's about 50/50 amongst the men in the "worked pretty well for me" vs "didn't work" camp) doesn't work for you is that it's everyone else's problem?

It is, like everything, a sort of game. The successful are the ones who adapt. That can mean changing approaches, trying new things, developing new interests, changing standards, etc.

I did online dating off and on for three years before getting into a long term relationship through it, and the one thing I can tell you is that by the end of it (a) I sent different sorts of messages, (b) I had different sorts of profile pictures, and (c) I behaved differently on dates. I paid attention, I didn't assume I deserved anything, I made adjustments, and it paid off. Sure, I'm jealous of the extremely good looking people who don't have to try, but you don't have to be one of them to find success.

To see why this is bad advice, consider if you weren't very good at basketball and asked a friend on how to improve. If they said "be yourself", that would be crazy. Clearly, whatever you've been doing hasn't been working, so doing more of that isn't going to improve anything.

If you actually want tips to meaningfully improve your dating life, feel free to email me (email in profile). Happy to chat more offline.

In dating, some people are after finding someone who is compatible with them, and if you're not being yourself, you're basically misrepresenting yourself, and lessening your chances of finding someone compatible -- as they think you're someone other than who you really are, and if they think themselves compatible with you, they're really only compatible with the image you are projecting of yourself.

So, really, lie about who you are at the risk of incompatibility.. which might be fine if you're just looking for a one-night-stand, but if you're looking for a deeper, longer-lasting relationship, you're doing both of you a huge disservice by lying... not to mention that it's skeezy and unethical.

I could have used "crocheting" instead of "basketball" and the analogy would be just as strong.

From your incorrect interpretation, you made wildly false conclusions about my lying to others, pretending to be someone I'm not, and generally misrepresenting myself, as if you think that's what I do on my dates.

I've learned how to date women by building self confidence, learning tactics, and also just as importantly, understanding what women want at a deeply psychological level. What this results in is my making the right moves at the right times in the right way and advancing the ball forward appropriately. You can bet that I do this with women I'm attracted to, both physically and in terms of beliefs, values, and attitudes. This also means that I back off and move on when I realize that there is no mutual interest. Too many men chase after women who will never be interested in them, and that is a complete waste of time.

Everything you said after your first two sentences is completely false conjecture. If you believe that that's what learning to date women is about, then you are doing yourself the greatest disservice in the world.

If you don't understand that there is skill in dating, then you probably don't understand dating.

(1) The point you just made isn't clear at all and

(2) It's not actionable whatsoever and gives the wrong impression that you don't actually need to do something, when the reality is the complete opposite and you do need to make major changes to your life and approach to dating

The proper advice is to improve yourself, work on your confidence, and understand female psychology. How to do that is not trivial, but once you read and learn more about it, it's not that complicated either.

If you have trouble finding women, move to a big city and start working on meeting people. It's pretty much a numbers game for men of average/below-average looks.

Occasionally, in a large metropolitan area with a large online presence, there's a bit of interest to be eked out of it for me, but mostly not.

That's been my personal experience anyway. I gave up on it a while back.

Check out theredpill on reddit and never look back.

Yea. As in once you check it out, you never want to see it again...

It works both ways. It's just the majority of women don't respond to the majority of men, regardless of crafting of the message.. though I must say that I've gotten more thanks but no thanks type responses than actual interest, which is still less than 1 in 15 messages out for any kind of response.

Of course the buffet effect works both ways... people tend to see the options, and gravitate towards a level of attractiveness and features they like, which removes most of the pool on that alone.. now, if you aren't in that attractiveness block, your options for matches won't work as well.

I think that OK Cupid does better than most at matching similar attractiveness levels in terms of who you even see. If you happen to get any response from more attractive people (even a thanks, but no thanks) you'll see a shift in the matches coming up all around.

Then again, I'm a bit of an odd duck who tries to read the profile before seeing a picture too closely. So will usually respond if something catches my interest in the writing.. and unlike most men and women, I'm perfectly happy making new friends. Getting serious with someone I met about a year ago via Facebook... All dating site experience for me in the last 5 years has been pretty bad all around.

Would think it would be cool if you had a short (300-500 character) block to write about yourself, where you pick matches on picture and words... so you either see a blurb, or a picture... if there are two matches (either you like both, or both of you like one or the other) then you can communicate and see the full profile. Would probably be a more effective matching strategy at least.

I'm not sure if it's all about the "crafting" of the message. A lot has to do with who you are and what you're trying to communicate.

I'm not a woman, nor have I pretended to be one on dating sites, but I've looked through lots of m4w personal ads, and if their emails are like their ads (which is very likely), they're super boring and generic.

This is really one of the biggest stumbling blocks, for both men and women (whose ads, on the whole, are just as boring as the men): their ads, profiles, and emails are way too much just like everybody else's.

If you can't differentiate yourself from everyone else, there's little reason to pick you over anyone else just like you, and even less reason to pick you over someone who can distinguish themselves.

I assumed the quality would be pretty even.

    > women have less trouble finding
    > partners irl

Men have the sexual discernment of rabbits, but are pretty choosy about who they're willing to actually commit to. There's a non-trivial proportion of men who are only in their current relationships for easy access to sex.

Men complain to their friends about not being able to get laid, women complain to their friends about not being able to find a good man. Women complain that men don't want to be "just friends", men complain that women want commitment they're not willing to give yet.

Women, on the other hand, usually have little trouble in at least meeting and dating prospective partners. That critical first step is a lot harder for many men.

I think you're limiting yourself to productive relationships with only half the world's population.

A. Don't find them attractive. B. That is not your sexual orientation. C. You're already with someone much higher on your list.

My point here is, an attractive female with a lot of guy "friends", are not her friends, because she has a good personality. That's just a fact of life, no matter what anecdotes you present.

I don't see how making a short video is any different vs. uploading a handful of photos.

*aw dang beaten to th punch

When I changed my profile to “bisexual” (which I am), I saw one reason why—scads of creepy, low-effort messages from men, sometimes with their profile set to “female” to attract more responses. The imbalance leads to slimy game tactics and drives down the quality of experience for everybody.

The only real women who ever messaged me first had qualities that I guess some people consider dealbreakers, such as being big, disabled, trans, non-white, or just not “conventionally pretty”. Curiously, for me and most of my male friends, none of those things would even be a problem, as long as there were basic chemistry and lifestyle compatibility.

In the end, I made a few good friends, and I think that’s actually a very good use case—OkCupid’s “match percentage” for example is a pretty good metric of how much you agree on basic politics, demeanour, and so on. It just falls short of predicting a “spark” in real life—I went on dates with “99% match” women who turned out to share many of what I consider my worst qualities.

Ironically, soon after I gave up on online dating, I met my lovely partner at an internet meetup—so you really never know!

A) Tinder et al should probably be some sort of "sort the people you're interested in and run Gale-Shapley to figure out who you're meeting with on Friday Night"

B) The actual design of the app hardly matters for success, only your ability to market it and get people to adopt it. Oh, and I don't have any advantage here, so the entire thing is a mess not worth fixing.

I miiight have an out by making the Gale-Shapley version of Tinder, writing a bunch of content marketing aimed at programmers/nerds, aggressively promoting it at meetups. That only really gets the male side of the matching market, which means I'd want funding and a marketing position for women-who-are-into-nerds.

Unless you're just looking for hookups, the goal isn't dating, it's long term matching. I probably have gone on dates with 1 in 20 matches and aside from my ego, I'd be better off being more selective.

It's not, but the author is considering how her actions have hitherto been perpetuating this state.

Yes, online dating may be a bad experience for average-looking guys, but sometimes it is so easy to stand out.

Find something offline and social instead, do that and meet likeminded people. You will almost certainly have better luck.

I think premature baldness killed it for me in my 20s. I had low confidence for a long time. I have been shaving my head for 2 yrs now. But, 9 out 10 women here in SF/Seattle/Portland prefer either white or black men.

I haven't been on a date for 2 yrs now. I think TINDER and alike hookup apps pretty much killed it for men like me. Women used to depend on men for resources. We have reverse situation now with women outnumering men in terms of employment rate and graduation rate.

What's worst, Indian women prefer white men if they are in US and master's degree and 100k or more salary is must for Indian/Asian women. I have first hand experience of Indian/Asian women telling me that if I don't have masters then don't bother talking to us.

I deleted tinder profile 3 months back. Nowadays, I spend time just by myself. I felt bad for a long time, but then I realized nobody cares. Like it or not, women care about looks, status and resources most. Miss 2 out 3 and you are done.

I used to blame myself but now I don't. I know I am a competent man, i contribute to the society in my capacity and this is only life I have. I now spend Fridays and Saturdays being very relaxed and doing nothing virtually.

Hookup culture is real. That's all I can say.

The problem for me has been that most years I haven't made a lot of money and I am somewhat unattractive. There are some issues with facial asymmetry that I was actually unaware of until recently -- and the funny thing is that when I went on a dating forums site and asked about it, they were quite rude in dismissing my concern, suggesting I was average or above average.

But after years of real-life attempts and online messaging never receiving replies from attractive women and rarely receiving replies at all, I have slowly realized over the years that I am a little bit ugly, and not having the good solid job or good height, means that attractive women do not have time for me. Which makes sense for them, its just hard for me to deal with since just because one is unattractive does not mean that they are attracted to _other_ unattractive people. I am attracted to attractive women and repelled by unattractive women. Which the same is probably happening the other way too.

So I have stopped trying to meet women and my new plan is to become independently wealthy and improve my face with surgery.

I think you should open your mind and understand why they think or believe that. If you do, you'll probably save yourself an incredible amount of pain, suffering, and frustration.

30 well crafted messages takes a lot of effort. The women that respond to me and progress towards a date are usually the ones that I am least interested in. In cold terms, the effort to result ratio makes online dating practically useless for me.

I don't blame the women as I expect that the ones I would most like to date get a lot of messages. The ones that are willing to progress with me I expect get less, to put it politely. At a certain point I make the cut and I just don't like that point.

I suggest everyone reading the advice of people here that says "Here's how I get ~25% of my messages read and end up with 2-3 dates per week" ignore the well-meaning advice and instead read Malcom Gladwell's article "The New-Boy Network" [0]. What applies to jobs in the essay applies to women in online dating.

[0] http://gladwell.com/the-new-boy-network/

Better start lifting more weights boys! (and girls!)

speaking as someone who is crushing it (100 dates in past year alone)

It would be impolite to say anything more than that

I gave up on online dating a few years back, but as a guy I don't think it was all that bad. Someone said 1/50... I think it was closer to 1/5 women would respond. And look... if they don't respond, that's fine... it's nothing personal at that point. Women have to sift through the messages very quickly.

Anyway my advice for making it not suck so much for guys:

1) Find a girl friend who has some style, have her pick out your clothes (you can have her go through your closet and throw out everything that sucks if you want -- every 5 years or so it's probably not a bad idea to let a woman do this for you). I'm not the best looking guy... compensating by dressing right helps.

2) Make sure your pics aren't shirtless selfies, or drunk frat-boy poses, or just you standing in front of a boring ass wall; photos where you are out doing interesting things... hiking, at a cooking class... whatever. No selfies. Outdoor pics in good lighting taken by someone else. Make sure your pics are current.

3) Put some time into your profile, but make sure it's not a wall of text. A few tweet-like sentences that are funny or summarize yourself... that's what you need to go for. I think you want to be a more-fun version of yourself. Be a little goofy, don't take yourself too seriously. And be honest... you'll get what you're looking for.

4) When you write to girls... actually write to them. Not a book... but something individual. Copy and pasting the same message won't get you anywhere. Tweet-like comments about something on her profile... ask her a question, share a funny story... Avoid diving right into compliments. Give her something to respond to, something to play off of.

5) When you go out to dinner, have her pay half the first date. It's not cheap, it's fair. And you own't feel taken advantage of. Be friendly, be courteous, but don't be some white knight waiting to be a victim. Look, if you really had a great time and you don't care... pick up the check, but only if you really want to. You aren't paying for her time... she's not an escort. Splitting the check is fine.

6) Have things ready to talk about on the dates. Ask stupid questions. Bring up things you know about her from her profile... have fun with it. Reading just one book a month will give you an incredibly leg up here.

And be realistic. You aren't perfect... she won't be perfect. The goal is to find someone you enjoy being with. No reason you can't have a lot of fun along the way.

thats me,

I'm pretty sure if a plague wiped out all men on earth but me, I still wouldn't get 1/5. 1/50 isn't an exaggeration for me. most websites make it hard to track such things, but the coffee meets baggle app made it easy. out of 100 i had 2 reciprocation, 1 saying it was an accident. out of the next 65 had 1 more before I deleted the app. on traditional dating sites like match, pof, etc I had similar though un-quantified results.

Also, if you're a bigger guy, spring for at least getting a collar lift (assuming you don't have a matching big neck), makes all the difference in the world but does about double the price of a button down shirt, and will piss you off when you have to get a new tailor, or one gets messed up.... I've had mostly good luck, one mess up out of the last 6-7 I've had done. Also, don't let dun-lap happen, just buy the right sized pants to cover your actual stomach up to near (just below) your belly button, and wear a shirt that covers it. Nothing looks worse than ill-fitting clothes when you're a big guy. A little loose is okay, but don't go for a tent either.

How tall are you and what is your race? Those two metrics are greatest determinants of how many messages you receive as a man.

I'm a guy. I'm extraordinarily serious about relationships. I never spam women because I'd hate to have it done to me, and I hate anything that makes humans dread talking to each other, anything that degrades the glue that allows humans to get along with empathy. Before I write to anyone, I've read everything they provided, and genuinely think we could get along.

But writing to women is an absolute tightrope. Do too much to demonstrate literacy and general quality as a human being, and the message may come off as weird or boring. The vast majority of the time, you won't receive feedback of any kind, so you tend to start trying to anticipate their reservations -- but if you write anything about your guesses as to why they might not be interested, you start sounding weird. And you get one chance per person. Writing again would be weird.

Get nothing back ten times? Twenty? Fifty? You can never ever let it get to you. You can never get a chip on your shoulder or allow any resentment to show through.

I accept a lot of this as just The Way It Is. The one thing I would hope to change in the minds of women, the one memo to women I would send, if I could, is: we have the internet and airplanes. Please don't write me off because I don't happen to be in the same city right now! A lot of women seem to want to cripple OKCupid to be, e.g., OKCupid NYC.

In my last successful relationship, we met on OKC, talked there, and then on another online chatting thing, and then in calls and texts and emails, and then I drove several hundred miles to see her. We knew we loved each other before I left. We were together for a few years. We have internet and airplanes! This could be a good thing for women.

Every time I disable my OKC account, I feel like it's for the last time, and the amount of time before I try again gets longer and longer. I feel like I'm being trained in a bad way.

I'm OK with how things are, but I wish things were better, because the world would be better if it were filled with people in healthy relationships that allow them to love and be loved.

I dunno if this is a women specific thing. Location-based matching seems to just be a "feature" of pretty much every dating website out there, so people get used to it.

I'm just one man and don't pretend to speak for every man in the world but my experience with online dating was much better than what she describes. I don't recall what my "success" rate was but it had to of been at least 33%? Maybe more?

Maybe the author should talk to men about their experiences rather than assuming that her own behavior is the norm.